The Watchers Out of Time [Paperback]

H.P. Lovecraft (Author), August Derleth (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 2nd paperback ptg edition (1992)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000HZ87BM
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

More About the Author

H. P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction. His relatively small corpus of fiction--three short novels and about sixty short stories--has nevertheless exercised a wide influence on subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. H. P. Lovecraft died in Providence in 1937.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Little Too Harsh . . . ., May 20, 2004

By 

Patrick J. Callahan (La Crosse, WI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Watchers Out of Time (Masters of Horror) (Paperback)

I've just read the reviews previously posted here for The Watchers Out of Time. Perhaps some of this criticism is a little harsh. I do agree that there's been some deception -- surely the fault of neither Lovecraft or Derleth, since both men were long dead when this edition was published.

The stories are all credited simply to H.P. Lovecraft on the front cover. But -- confusingly -- the back cover describes the book as a joint effort of Lovecraft and Derleth. Then we get more confused when, looking at the back of the flyleaf, we discover that ALL the stories are copyrighted by August Derleth alone.

Derleth and Lovecraft knew each other, and they did do some genuine collaboration. But I think this volume is predominantly Derleth's work. One of the other reviewers guessed "95% Derleth's" as I recall. I could believe that.

When I say the other reviews are too harsh, I mean that August Derleth was a pretty good author in his own right. At his best, when Derleth writes these gothic tales he rivals Lovecraft in narrative and tone. Some of these stories are very good actually-- well worthy of "Weird Tales" and other pulp collections of the time.

Unfortunately, one of Derleth's limitations when writing Lovecraftian material was his conventional religious belief. He tended to spin Lovecraft's cosmic "old ones" into something resembling Christian devils or demons. This loses much of the very chilling alien flavor of Lovecraft's original mythos. There is always a kind of nihilistic despair haunting around the edges of real Lovecraft stuff-- e.g., "At the Mountains of Madness."

All in all, one must agree that the book is less than what is advertized. And yet, Derleth is a good writer and his tales can be enjoyable. I enjoyed the book and hate to see it so roundly and harshly panned. The problem is-- this is just NOT really H.P. Lovecraft's writing.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fifteen of August Derleth's less inspired Mythos tales, March 30, 2003

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Watchers Out of Time (Masters of Horror) (Paperback)

It is most unfortunate and wrong in more ways than one that this collection of stories is passed off as the work of H.P. Lovecraft. All of these stories were written by August Derleth, who was inspired by various little notes Lovecraft left behind, but the only indication of the true ownership of the tales comes in the list of sources from which these stories were assembled, a section quite easy to overlook by the general reader. Any Lovecraft disciple must have mixed feelings about August Derleth. His contribution to the Lovecraft legacy is undeniably significant; in the years after Lovecraft's death, Derleth almost single-handedly kept his memory alive, forming historic Arkham House to publish the master's stories himself. Derleth's contribution is much more controversial when it comes to extending the Cthulhu legacy, however, for his conception of the Mythos is significantly different from that of Lovecraft; Derleth tended to see things in black and white, good vs. evil. This bifurcation of the Mythos legacy is in sharp contrast to Lovecraft's original vision of a world where good and evil do not exist per se. Reading Derleth's Mythos stories poses a danger of the reader conflating Derleth's ideas and conceptions with those of Lovecraft, and I for one strive to keep the original legacy intact in my mind. This danger is exacerbated by Derleth's frequent citation of events and characters from Lovecraft's original writings. Dunwich and Innsmouth serve as frequent settings for these stories; familiar names such as Wilbur Whateley and the Whateley clan, Obed Marsh and his batrachian (which seems to be Derleth's favorite word) descendants are encountered at every turn; and all manner of dark tomes are referred to, those introduced by members of the Lovecraft Circle as well as others Derleth invents himself.

August Derleth was a perfectly competent writer capable of producing an impressive story every now and then. For the most part, however, his work is overly formulaic and repetitive, and, while he tries very hard to write the kind of stories Lovecraft wrote, his stories just don't captivate the reader or come alive with the type of overwhelming, cosmic menace that seemed to live in the very words Lovecraft put to paper. The fifteen stories collected here are remarkably similar in plot and presentation, and that helps make this a somewhat tedious read at times; sometimes the only real spark of interest generated in my mind was a curiosity to see just how commonplace a spin a given story would place on Lovecraft's otherworldly cosmology. When Derleth did dare to color outside the lines, his attempts come off rather strangely and almost comically. A case in point is The Dark Brotherhood, a tale in which a band of strange men bearing an incredibly strong resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe introduce a character clearly based on Lovecraft himself to a vision of another world. Having these alien creatures adopt the image of Poe makes the story memorable to the reader at the expense of the story's effectiveness.

You really won't find anything here that did not originate with Lovecraft; Derleth seems to have a literary mold in which he mixes Mythos beings and characters in random fashion from one story to the next. As I say, though, Derleth is a competent writer, so few of these stories are painfully hard to read; judged outside of the context of Lovecraft, they are effective albeit repetitive. As a Lovecraft fan, I enjoy Derleth's stories (and I might note that his best are to be found not here but in The Mask of Cthulhu and The Trail of Cthulhu), but they are just so lifeless that the memory of them begins to fade as soon as I finish them. I believe there is material here capable of entertaining both the Lovecraft devotee as well as the general horror fan. The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that these stories really should not be attributed in any way to Lovecraft, no matter what the book cover might want you to believe.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK, but nothing terribly original, June 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Watchers Out of Time (Masters of Horror) (Paperback)

As other readers have mentioned, this really isn't Lovecraft's work at all. There are some good ideas here, but also a lot of rehashing and too many references to HP's own stories. I also find Derleth's "Christianization" of the Cthulhu mythos quite annoying (i.e., the cosmic striggle of good and evil). For Lovecraft, the Elder Gods were bad guys, including Azathoth, Yog Sothoth, etc., and the Great Old Ones were bad guys, including Cthulhu, Shub Niggurath, etc. Only the "Other Gods" (Nodens et al, unnamed) were not malevolent, and mostly neutral, though enemies of the Elder Gods. Derleth, however, rewrites the mythos so that the Elder Gods are the good guys (Nodens et al), and the others are all known as The Ancient Ones. There was some cosmic "war in heaven", where the virtuous Elder Gods won, but continually struggle against evil, etc., etc. It diminishes the existential terror that was part of Lovecraft's appeal, and completely changes one of the most important characteristics of his creations. Still, there are some imaginative stories here, though they're not the slightest bit scary. Worth reading if your a fan of Lovecraft, but don't expect too much.